Indefinite Leave to Remain
by AbsoluteNegation
Summary: The final attack on Houtou goes horribly wrong, and the final consequences of the Wave come home to roost. DARK. Violence, character death. 585, 393 implied, NC-17. COMPLETE
1. Plus 16

**Disclaimer**:This fanwork is based on characters and situations created and owned by Minekura Kazuya. No copyright infringement is intended or implied. No profit made.

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_**+16**_

The sun hides behind the towering mountains, and Houtou's shadow reaches hungry tendrils towards them as the four of them stand together in the pass.

Goku presses up against Sanzo for a brief moment, seeking reassurance, a tiny break from his usual self-confidence. Sanzo deigns, for a surprise, to let his hand rest in Goku's hair, more affection than Hakkai's seen him show in public in a while now, and in another time, at another moment, he would have smiled at it. He stays quiet himself, letting them have their moment. It's not as if he and Gojyo haven't indulged in their own goodbyes, after all.

There's a brief awkward moment of silence as the four of them stand at the mouth of the little mountain pass they took to reach the fortress, grim and desperate. Sanzo, as always, is the one to break it. "Let's go," he says simply, and Hakkai flicks his wrist in a practiced motion, sending Hakuryuu winging towards the sky and to safety, as they begin picking their way down the slope of the mountain, towards the small side entrance Kougaiji had directed them to.

His footsteps don't echo in the cavernous halls of Houtou. Something about this place leeches sound from the air and breath from the body, the cutting sensation in his lungs that he knows from high altitudes. Saturated in power, so intense he can barely discern its intent, or if it even has one, and as he moves ahead with the stealth of a predator, felling as many sentries as he can to cover for the others behind him, he realises it's probably the only thing that's preventing everyone in the vicinity sensing his aura, or Goku's behind him, sun-bright and grimly focused.

It's at the third intersection that everything predictably falls apart; a gaggle of guardsmen catch sight of him, and Hakkai has no idea whether they've heard of him or just wary of anyone who's not supposed to be there, but the alarm goes up before he can kill all of them, and the world erupts in klaxons.

So much for subtlety, then.

He risks a glance behind him, long enough to spy the flutter of an edge of Goku's cape, and then charges towards the large hall he can see at the end of the corridor, relieved when they all trot after him like good little cogs. It's exactly where anyone who didn't know Houtou's interiors would probably go, away from the lower levels.

If Kougaiji's kept his side of the bargain, there should be enough of his men on guard in the lower levels to guarantee the others relatively safe passage – if Hakkai can stop reinforcements from arriving long enough.

It won't be a problem. He's always fought best alone, after all.

The gates to the subterranean levels grind all the way shut far ahead of him, at the other end of the hall he's just entered; it's either a stupidly delayed reaction on the part of someone on Koushu's side, or one of Kougaiji's supporters lending a helpful hand. Either way, all it succeeds in is cutting off part of Houtou's soldiers from the basement for as long as it takes someone in authority to realise what a bad idea that is. It does very little in terms of removing the couple of hundred youkai in the hall Hakkai's just entered. They're armed to the teeth, rather more organised than the rabble that's hunted them for the last year and a half, and looking quite businesslike.

Oh well.

He favours them with a pleasant smile, or as pleasant as it can look with elongated teeth and the murderous rage rising in him. He has heard that rage blurs faces and names, that it strips everything in its path of identity, but it isn't the only thing that can; so do conviction and love and insanity. All three fuel him today, and there is little room for anger or humanity in the cold calculation of movement and resistance and trajectory. "Well, I suppose that leaves us to settle things," he observes to no one in particular, and the words carve through the strange tension in the air, cutting through the strings holding them all frozen. The youkai charge, and as energy – life – grows in his palm, he has a moment's grim amusement at the idea that _this_ slaughter is sanctioned.

Hours later, any amusement, grim or not, has drained entirely from the situation. Hakkai's heart is pounding as if he's run a marathon, his body is drenched in sweat, and a fine tremor is racing through his hands. He's not used his chi for a while now, relying on his other powers, even resorting to a blade at times when the battle's been too close. The sword in his hand doesn't feel quite right; it's built for a taller man, perhaps, or one less slender. He isn't quite sure – Cho Hakkai has never used a weapon of any size before. Other than himself, he thinks ruefully, leaning heavily against the smooth metal of the passageway to Gyuumaoh's resurrection chamber, content to let Kougaiji's men hold the fort for the moment, trying his best not to look as if he's been hauling himself along the halls. His handprints on the elevator's doors are bloody from tying a hasty bandage on the gash on his left thigh; he didn't have the time to heal it then, and he doubts he could find the energy to do so now without passing out from the effort.

He can hear Sanzo's voice ahead, near where the map says the main entrance to the chamber is. Hakkai takes another deep, rasping breath, using the brief moment of respite to gather himself, listening to the conversation without registering anything beyond the tone of Sanzo's voice – quiet, frantic, actually worried. As attractive as the idea of giving in to the fainting fit that's been flirting with the edge of his vision for a while is, things won't be substantially different when he wakes. And he still has his duty to do.

It's hard to hear them over all the screaming, or sense anything at all over the oppressive weight of power here, though Hakkai suspects the shrill ringing in his ears has more to do with himself, and the solid blow he took to his head from a burly youkai upstairs than any of the sutras. The air is damp, thick as glue, clotting in his nose and mouth with the oily aftertaste of dark magic.

Rounding the corner shows them all gathered just outside the entrance to the chamber, even Kougaiji and Lirin – except, oddly, for Sanzo, who's hanging back a little from the rest, slumped with his back to the wall. He doesn't react when Hakkai comes up next to him, which is strange until he sees the hand Sanzo's holding to his ear, and the thin trickle of blood from his nose. There's enough dripped down on his robes (human blood, Hakkai can smell it at this distance) that he's been bleeding copiously for a while.

"What…happened?" Talking feels like choking on rubble, but it helps distract him from the throbbing pain in his leg and his head, and in his right hand, burned from a shield that hadn't lasted too long in the face of a particularly vicious fire-wielder. Sanzo doesn't respond, although he glares at Hakkai viciously enough that it's somewhat reassuring. Sanzo trying to conserve his hostility is infinitely worse. Then he sees the inside of the chamber, head-on, and his breath stops.

The sutras are here all right, and judging by the way Goku's hands are clamped around his head, the shrill whine in his ears isn't about his head injury after all. They're placed inside four clear pillars, arranged in a circle of eight altogether - there are devices of some kind on the others, but he can't understand what they are - and the power radiating from the circle is almost visible, if he squints right; it's certainly _palpable_, pressing against his skin in warning, like the finest edge of a blade that could remove skin without breaking it, tugging at him, drawing his _life_ from him, almost. It draws his gaze inexorably to the centre, the small device placed precisely in the centre of the pillars, and he doesn't need a reply to figure out what _that_ probably does.

Oddly enough, though, Kougaiji's the one who answers. Hakkai doesn't bother to look at him, letting the words wash over him, picking out what he needs to over the white noise of his pain and the resonance of the sutras. A trap, made with four of the sutras, fuelling the dark energy that swells from the heart of Houtou, absorbing the qi of all around it, critical mass. So that, he thinks, explains why Sanzo's bleeding from ears and nose and mouth from carrying a fifth in. The power generated by the sutras, magnified by the other devices, turned in on itself and impenetrable. Dead bodies lying by the side, youkai who were absorbed. He wonders dazedly if their souls are part of why the power in the room feels so utterly foul, or if that's his own nature recoiling before it.

Sanzo makes a rough choking sound behind him, and the light grows just a little brighter, more intense. Time's running out, he can feel whatever's in the circle growing, gathering itself, and there's no way to break the circle without entering it, no way to enter without dying. Kougaiji and the other youkai aren't even a possibility; his power's far too little to handle this, and he's barely standing upright as it is. Goku...rechargeable, and a very bad idea. He doesn't know what pitting the full energy of the earth against the sutras that sustain the land will do, and he has no desire to find out.

And there's so little reason not to choose the simplest option.

He breaks away from the rest, staggering forward through the waves of forbidding power to the perimeter of the circle. He hears a cry that might be his name, but the light beckons, and he steps into the circle before anyone can-

_Pain._

It's ice-cold inside the circle, as if he's stepped into another dimension entirely, and the air crackles and bites and claws at him, a rush of fatigue racing through his already weakened body, slowing his mind, abrupt and total enough to make him stagger forward, his leg buckling. The movement tears the wound on his thigh partially open, and he thinks he screams out, although he isn't sure, he can't hear a sound above the roar of the sutras around him.

The power that rushes from him stings his skin, his lungs burning as he struggles to force breath into and out of them. The air feels beyond thin - it cuts at him so deep it feels like he's haemorrhaging - he might well be, using his power at this point of exhaustion, and with the circle draining him besides. All around him is light, blazing from him, reflecting off the shining steel walls, seeping into the corners of his vision, tinted red with capillaries bursting in his eyes, blood draining from him anywhere it can. He forces himself to take one step forward, then another, and though it's only a few feet to the centre, it feels like walking through solid concrete, a vicious stab of pain shooting from thigh to gut every time his foot touches the ground. Sweet-iron taste of blood welling in his mouth, swift and strong, would be artery-bright if he parted his lips, and he'd cry out, but it hurts too much to draw enough breath.

For a brief moment he's utterly certain he can feel Gojyo next to him, smell the tobacco-sweat-leather of his skin, but of course he's alone, the thought taking him that last stumbling step to the centre and sparks a crushing pain in his chest. He's felt the beginnings of it before, twice while healing Gojyo, but it's more this time, _final_. He smashes his fist down on the little device, a rush of savage satisfaction as the small lights racing over it wink out with almost anticlimactic ease, at the same time his legs do. His sight blurs as he sags forward, forcing his senses to extend, vines racing out from his body to curl around the bases of the pillars. Bright white light racing to the centre of the circle, bright white pain in his heart, and he tugs, the sound in his ears building to a shattering scream, the birth cry of the world tearing him open from the inside out, and

_oh, Gojyo, Gojyo, I'm so sorry._

all the things he could ever regret, pillars smashing out, the circle broken, but it's too late, finally too late, and it turns out, against all his expectations and experience, that it's revoltingly easy to die after all.


	2. Plus 12

_**+12**_

Sanzo sets the specs of Houtou down, removing his glasses and massaging the bridge of his nose. Glaring at the paper as if it's personally responsible for driving him insane. Hakkai can empathise - they've been staring at it for hours, and he's traced the route Kougaiji's described a million times and he's quite sure Sanzo's still displeased with it.

"Hakkai."

"Yes?"

Sanzo's frown reflects his own. "The trouble's going to be sealing off the underground levels. At the most optimistic, assuming the idiot prince can get his men into place, we'll have a couple of hundred youkai in there with us."

Hakkai nods at Sanzo's assessment of the situation, leaning back in his chair and crossing his arms over his chest. it's accurate, and there's only one way to deal with it. The knowledge is not unmixed with a little petty satisfaction. "I've done it before. As long as either Kougaiji's side or you manage to close it all off, that is."

Sanzo nods slowly, his gaze speculative. "Two might handle that easier than one."

The suggestion's obvious, and unwarranted. Hakkai gives him a small smile that's probably as humourless as he's feeling right now. The facts are obvious, really, and Sanzo's insistence on having him spell everything out is frankly annoying. And unsubtle. "Yes, two might. But Kougaiji can't come into the open that soon, and you'll need all the protection you can get. It's imperative that you reach the inner chambers in fit condition to use the sutra. Without dying before the job is complete."

"Hnh. ...we could have Kougaiji focus these men he claims to control on the cutoff points rather than the resurrection chamber."

Hakkai heaves a sigh, lifting one hand to remove his monocle, pinching the bridge of his nose as he continues, patiently. "Sanzo, there are four doors and two elevators. All which will need to be defended by small bands of possibly unreliable youkai, with a lower ratio of uncertain youkai in the levels below." He holds Sanzo's gaze steadily as he shakes his head. "You know that the best way is to have the points closed and locked, for however long we can manage, with a cohesive group to cover your backs. You need Goku's - Seiten Taisei's - strength with you." He waits a beat before adding, pointedly, "And I believe that we're both aware of my... capabilities."

Sanzo scowls, but his voice is softer when he speaks - betraying a touch of sympathy Hakkai hadn't expected from him. It stings a little that Sanzo's trying, the tacit admission of caring in it. "Fine." He gives him a long look, one of the ones that dig right into Hakkai, not that he really wants to see. No, he already has, Hakkai's sure. "You're not going to be facing a bunch of shit-eating hicks, you know."

As if he didn't know that. As if the image of Hyakuganmaoh's disorganised forces gathering before him isn't clear in Gonou's mind, as if he doesn't recall exactly when derision turned to concern and then panic, if not their faces or the precise details of death. He pulls himself together, inhaling deeply as he swings his gaze back to Sanzo with a small smile. Leans forward, settling the monocle back in place, a soft almost-laugh in his throat, because the only other option lies somewhere he's never quite been able to reach. "Yes, Sanzo, I am aware." He tilts his head, watching him. "Could the disparity be much more than human storming a castle full of youkai, do you think? Or a room filled with small gods?"

Sanzo's eyes narrow as he speaks the obvious; as if the two of them don't already know how this is going to play out, no matter what the others think. He and Sanzo have always been the tacticians of the team, after all. "You're determined to do this, then."

Hakkai spreads his hands in his 'by all means' gesture, aware Sanzo won't find any emotion to exploit in his expression. "Show me another, half so viable alternative." He pauses for a moment, pretending to give Sanzo room to speak before he goes on, a tiny petty part of him vindictively pleased when all Sanzo does is grind his teeth. "I really have no choice."

Sanzo rises, his chair scraping back loudly enough to make Goku pause for a moment in his gentle snorfling. "Fine," he grits out.

Hakkai pastes his Helpful Smile on his face, aware exactly how much that expression annoys Sanzo. It's best for the both of them that they not speak further of this; his skin feels rubbed raw, and every muscle of his body aches with the strain of not letting himself fall apart. It's been a long day, really. "Shall I heat some sake?"

"No. Fuck off."

Considering Sanzo only resorts to cheap insults when he feels outmaneuvered (by Hakkai, anyway), he supposes that's a win. He can't bring himself to care. Sanzo angered is Sanzo with an unpleasant tendency to state the truth, and so he rises, turning his back on the table and the others. "I think I'll have a shower before bed."


	3. Minus 2

_**-2**_

Hakkai reaches out blindly, the tiny flutter of what he won't call panic stilling suddenly - almost completely - as a warm, familiar texture appears under his fingertips. He pulls Gojyo closer, needing the solid press of flesh to silence the lingering whispers in his mind. It's always like this, now, fumbling desperately in the darkness, lights off so they can pretend that this is comfort.

The last weeks have been hell, their proximity to Houtou and the source of the wave wearing at all of them, feeding the dark corners of consciousness. Even Sanzo has been affected, and none of them dare to ask why; the answer is nothing any of them need or want right now - possibly ever. Instead there is this, the terrible grasping need that leads them to split up during the long nights that are somehow never long enough, though they all know it's far more dangerous this way. Closed doors leave the world outside, barely existing, if at all, while they cling to each other and the dubious safety of carnal touch.

Moonlight denies them perfection of denial, and Hakkai would savour that irony if he were someone just a little less himself. If he couldn't see so clearly the spill of crimson over white pillows and his own near-insanity mirrored in matching eyes that try to hide their colour in the cold light. Still, it is what they can do, nearly forgetting the road and the attacks, bodies and blood and relentless fatigue in the feverish consummation of _fearhatedeathloveneed_, taken under cover of night. Gojyo's warm, callused hand on his cheek, teeth all but cutting into his lip in the crush of a kiss let spin out just a bit too far, and Hakkai burrows into sensation, aching to leave thought behind.

Here, now, future, past...it all blends together, finally, the exhaustion of their mission blurring the lines of the blueprint he's so carefully constructed over months and years of love and death and pain and love, until all he has, finally, is a smeared suggestion of life. Jaw, throat, the long line of a collarbone under his mouth, the tang of nicotine and beer in the sweat on his tongue... This hurts like someone else's wound, and the whispered promise of return is anything but comforting, in the face of that.

Stop thinking, drown in pleasure that bites all the harder for the pain beneath it all, for the fear that drives and screams and demands a surrender that they cannot give; Hakkai presses fingers to abused flesh, silk like (blood) water in his hand, phantom taste of grace on heated skin. Lock it all out, deny and obfuscate under the slide of Gojyo's hands on his skin, and the numbness that sharpens this _feeling_ that he's never been able to mitigate, ashamed of his own desperation.

_Gojyo_.

Though they tucked tenderness away forever ago - for another time - his touch is still somehow reverent, as if Hakkai is something precious, and gods, he can't stand against it. Even flesh torn and laid open, rebuilt to indifference, cannot hold against this one thing. His Gojyo, stolen from the world by a liar and a murderer who, however unworthy, simply can't allow anything else. Greedy bastard for the feel of hair and skin and mouth and...

Hakkai arches, rocking back, his body stretching, stinging, alive and real for just this tiny slice of time, when Gojyo is inside and all around, and the world ceases. A low groan reaches him, eyelids fluttering open, needing to see that sound. He's so beautiful caught in pleasure, and Hakkai wants to drive everything terrible away, forever, please gods, eternity here in this room just to let him look and feel this way forever. Red in his hand again, chest firm under the other one, blunt fingers slipping over Hakkai's throat and into his mouth, flavour of cigarettes and salt and the ghost of a home that he can't remember, except for this.

He moves, rhythmic, drawing it out as much as he can, and he can feel the moans in his chest and throat for each wave of pleasure he shouldn't be allowed to take - though he will. With everything he has, he will grasp and clutch for this, for Gojyo and the broken they might one day be able to not-be, and the heavens help anyone or anything that stands in his way. Gojyo's hands curl around his hips, rocking up to meet Hakkai's movements, sliding deeper, harder, _more_, and Hakkai wallows in deep sounds of pleasure and need as he fucks himself on Gojyo, indulging in the slightly filthy edge that so pleases, and frees them both.

Sweat slicks his skin, Gojyo's beneath him, gazes exchanged and fluttering away under lashes pressed close in waves of _needpleasurewant_ as they move faster, all but frantic, now. Chasing the tail of climax, Hakkai can't think anymore, and gods, what a blessed state, all reality narrowed to this moment and the heat of Gojyo's hand around him, stealing his breath with every stroke and thrust.

Gojyo's name falls from his lips like prayer, head down, riding hard and fast, giving himself up completely to Gojyo's desire and the rising tide that promises to swallow him whole. Cries out, the sound ragged, tearing at his throat as it takes him, spilling messily onto damp skin. And still they go on, Hakkai pliant to the demands of Gojyo's need, allowing rough hands to guide him, take him, use him to find release. Breath rushes fast into him as Gojyo bucks up under him, deep, hard, so _real_ that it wounds.

They lie like this, tangled together in something that isn't really sleep, and even Hakkai doesn't bother with mess and the lingering scent of sex clinging to them, until moonlight abandons them to the burning of the sun.


	4. Plus 1

_**+1...**_

_It was perhaps only natural that the first thought that drifted through his strangely empty mind as he watched was _oh, please no, not again. _It was the closest thing to a prayer he could have spoken - he who had been raised on his knees before a crucified martyr he hadn't believed in and reborn in a rain of death under the gaze of a goddess who hadn't cared that he didn't - and utterly futile, because Gojyo was falling to his knees, blood everywhere, gods, so much blood. _

He doesn't remember that Goku screamed for Gojyo until much later, and even then, it seems more knowledge than memory, the way they moved to shelter Gojyo, the feel of a neck snapping in his hands as he dealt with the last of the youkai he was fighting. The entire evening after that is more or less lost in his mind, and isn't _that _familiar? but the one who'd laugh was gone - _Gojyo, Gojyo _- and Sanzo wouldn't understand.

The first day begins with the crystal-clear image of Sanzo's fist crashing into his face - the ring looks rather bright in the sun, he thinks later, muzzily, and the thought guides him to waking, to find Gojyo torn from his arms and a grave before him, already filled. Sanzo stands between him and the grave, as if to stop Hakkai from digging Gojyo back up, or crawling in there with him. Of course, neither is entirely an impossibility, and he's honestly not sure whether it's that or the fact that Sanzo sincerely believes he could stop him that makes him cover his face with his hands and laugh.

On the second day, Dokugakuji arrives.

The devastation written so clearly on his face is all that saves him, once he's off his dragon and within striking range. Hakkai holds himself back, enough for the youkai to start calling for truce, and then Sanzo's stepping forward, asking questions, and all he has to do is stay back and try to restrain his instincts.

There's an offer, of course. Aid, alliance - you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours, as Gojyo would have said - flying dragons once they're within a night's flight of Houtou, to misdirect knowledge of their proximity. The sole attraction of the prospect for Hakkai is how much closer it brings him to the place and the people he wants to destroy, those who precipitated the death he can still scarcely absorb. Sanzo, thankfully, takes the lead. Kougaiji is notably absent from this little expedition, and Hakkai wonders uncharitably whether they were worried the ikkou would shoot first and ask questions later. That line of thought has some truth to it, which displeases him, because he needs the rage right now, when it's all still raw and everything's blurry that isn't red blood on dark skin below red hair.

He doesn't bother addressing Dokugakuji. He is, after all, not Jien, and he wants to grind that name into shards beneath his heel and press them into the youkai's skin one by one, until he can hold up red blood and show him how it's precisely the wrong shade to be Gojyo's. He knows _that_ shade intimately now, pressed against his lips and crawling under his nails like tiny fingers reaching out, and gods, he must have been delusional to think running clawed fingers through crimson hair could have prepared him for the clinging, nauseating reality of it. The only thing that stops him from tearing Dokugakuji's heart out (because he has _no right_ to grieve, none, not when his liege's hand gave the orders, whatever his lip service to Kougaiji's neutrality) is the fact that he _is_ grieving. It pleases Hakkai to think of him living in the knowledge that the side he chose killed his brother, that he precipitated that chain of events at least in part. Dokugakuji looks at him, a few times, briefly, guiltily, and Hakkai would wonder what he sees there - condemnation? apathy? fury? - but he really can't make himself care enough. He leaves without saying anything to Hakkai, and that, at least, shows some intelligence.

Once he's gone, Sanzo orders them to speed up. It's entirely possible the offer's a trap. Hakkai obeys, and loses himself in the mechanics of driving and watching and waiting. The night is a relief, but only from the sting of the sun in his eyes.

Madness licks at the corners of his vision as he drives, colouring the world the vermillion of his rage, a little deeper with every mile they move from the grave where the last shreds of what he could have called his soul lies.

He isn't entirely sure why he hasn't snapped yet - the lack of an appropriate target, perhaps - and Sanzo certainly isn't, to judge by the looks he likes to think he's concealing. Then again, he's hard-pressed to find an accurate definition of _snapped _that excludes finding the idea of human entrails intriguingly tasty and includes an intense desire to see every last youkai in their path eviscerated and dying painfully that hasn't applied to him for...well, all his life. Cho Gonou was a disaster waiting to happen, and he thinks Sanzo just might be the only _(living)_ person to ever grasp that. Gojyo hadn't; how trustingly he'd leaned his scarred cheek against lethal hands, how fearless his mouth as it kissed away the pain of each writhing tendril of memory on his skin, as if a changed name and three clasps of silver could protect them both.

He consciously loosens his grip on Hakuryuu's steering wheel, and hopes the jolting of the jeep over the bumpy mountain trail will hide the shudders wracking his frame.

He realises, on the fourth day, that he doesn't know how to mourn someone he loves.

_Mother_ and _Father_ are clear enough in his memories for him to remember precisely how unconcerned he was by their presence, and their eventual absence. He remembers screaming for Kanan through the gates of the orphanage, shaking off the hands trying to pull him inside, pull him _away_, and while he can't see her through tears of fury and terror, he knows she must be struggling against their mother, can feel her every bit as afraid and angry, can hear her promise to find him again, and the quiet fire of hope her voice lights sustains him through his youth. (It occurs to him several years later that perhaps calling for his mother might have been a better way to play on her sympathies, all said and done, but as much chagrin as he feels that day, he decides to forgive his childhood self the moment of honesty.) Kanan...finding her again was a blessing, and yet all he can remember from those crazed, blood-filled months of searching is the desperate need to believe in her - alive, whole, still his other half, his very own calamity to cherish and smother, no matter what he became. That he found her as tainted in her mind as he'd become in his was a delightful bit of irony, the kind the storytellers love and the gods amuse themselves precipitating...and the hate they'd sunk into and heaped upon themselves poisoned what lay between them, the inexorable, sour taste of resentment slipping into the tears in their minds that the storm of their anger ripped open. Cho Gonou died hating Kanan as much as he died loving her, and Cho Hakkai is, after all, but a symbol.

This grief, though, is pure and cold, shocking and deep, leaving him breathless at odd moments, drowning him in memory at the slightest chance, a thousand associations he never knew he had, or couldn't have known he'd need so much. Sanzo smokes twice as much now - and every click of his lighter scrapes yet another exquisitely thin fragment from what remains of the form of Cho Hakkai, all the tiny anchors of his present self tearing their way out from under his skin with every time Gojyo doesn't lean forward to touch his shoulder, doesn't sit down with them at meals, doesn't, doesn't, _isn't_. He makes such a conscious effort to avoid thinking of Gojyo in the present tense that it tears at even his careful speech patterns, and there are times when he wonders whether it would be simpler to indulge in forgetting his...forgetting the reason for his absence, as Goku and Sanzo do, in the moments when habit overtakes grief, and an imperious hand reaches for a cigarette that isn't offered, or a briefly cheerful voice stutters to a halt over an order of beer that doesn't need to be placed, not any more. He understands the fact of their mourning without concerning himself with it; any comfort he utters would be hypocrisy, and any solace he offers a lie.

The ticking in the back of his mind is counting up now, minutes, hours, days, thunderous in the vast silence where his heart used to beat, as they drive towards the meeting-point they'd arranged, where the dragons will be waiting for them. He kills, every day now, and the other two step back and let him, guided by some instinct of self-preservation (or perhaps Goku's taken what he saw in the gourd to heart at last, Hakkai doesn't know), and having nothing but targets in his line of vision is oddly freeing. It's a privilege he hasn't had in a long time. Part of him envies the simplicity of that time, the sweeping finality of black and white, and himself the ice that moved between them, only visible by the blood that spattered on him and sank into his skin.

He thinks he eats, though he can't remember what or how much; in the past, he's pushed his body hard enough that collapsing into bed led to deep, dreamless sleep, but they can't afford that anymore, not with wave after wave of assassins, small groups, large groups, undercover and not, the threat of attack ever-present. He forces himself to take naps instead, the jeep bumping and shuddering under Sanzo's inexpert handling, the passenger seat infinitely more comfortable than huddling up against a fire that blinds his night vision. The details of days and nights blur away, soft around the edges like he remembers his vision turning when he overextends his qi just enough to weaken without sliding all the way into unconsciousness. It occurs to him that perhaps it isn't healthy, that he can't remember exactly how many days it's been, because all he can feel when he closes his eyes is the way Gojyo's blood felt on his skin, and all he knows is the fading warmth of his body in his arms, and he could give a fuck about his state of mind, really. Oblivion is infinitely merciful by comparison.

Conversation in the jeep dwindles to almost nothing. Sanzo sleeps, or drives, grimly silent when he's awake. Goku tries to strike up conversation a few times, but the words drop against the background rumble of wheels on rocky roads like pebbles into the ocean, drowned out and lost, and it's not long before he's subsided into anxious silence. In another time, Hakkai would comfort him. An extra dish added to his dinner or a quiet, reassuring conversation...but in another time Gojyo would have kicked his shin and started a quarrel long before now, and everything would have been all right, and in that light it seems worthless to even make the effort.

He wonders, sometimes, about how loud Gojyo's absence is in the jeep, whether it's a quality of negative space that sings with the scent of the person who used to occupy it. Would it have been so if they'd had their quiet little life in their quiet little house, reminders everywhere of what's gone, or if he could have washed Gojyo from the walls and wiped him meticulously off the furniture, stripped down and built up until he could pretend his solitude was a matter of aesthetics. If, in another universe, he could have listened to his love being called insignificant, nodded and turned back, picked up the pieces of her smashed flower vase and swept them and her out of his neat little house, leaving no shards of memory underfoot where he might tread carelessly upon them. Perhaps he could have, in another life, and yet his mind stutters to a halt when he applies that fantasy to Gojyo, as if what he felt when Kanan was taken from him was but a pale echo of this. The rage he felt then was cold and sharp as steel pressed to skin, the desire for vengeance, to carve his pound of flesh from the heart of the world; this drive to destroy is fierce and ageless, deliberate and all-encompassing, more loss than he thought a life could hold or a soul could bear. Every inch of skin that Gojyo's touched would burn if he forgot, he thinks - except he's learned how to forget, hasn't he, somewhere in the tangle of birth and death that his life has become? He'd think it was self-preservation, but he doesn't have any left.

The rhythm of his body as he moves to kill matches the ticking of his life, each death adding to the time he has left, staving off the need for mindless slaughter that much longer. Cho Hakkai was a construct of Sanzo's grace and Gojyo's love, and without Gojyo all that's left is to stand as long as he can by Sanzo's side, and they're so close to Houtou he can almost taste it, just a little longer, just a little

(_besides, _part of him whispers, _this way you don't have to go looking for them_)

longer and then he can let go, unleash himself entirely. Surviving Houtou would be a disappointment to him, but not nearly as bad for him as it would be for everyone else there. He recognises this impulse in himself, and it has nothing of reason in it, beyond the cold calculation of where best he can kill how many, where he can best arrange not to survive the encounter. He's fairly sure the others will understand, not that it would concern him deeply if they didn't; he owes them no more than this, at the end of the day.

Perhaps carrying a blade would be useful, he catches himself thinking on the tenth day. It brings a rueful sort of smile to his lips. It would be so easy to give in, to melt back into what he was. Some might say he's already there, but he isn't, not really; Cho Gonou was above all a creature of purpose, and what drives his new life is anything but. Nor is this the instinct-driven unlimitered form he knows from brief battles (and from Gojyo in bed, smiling down at him, wicked mouth tracing the sharp edges of claws, rocking against him, shuddering and gasping and arching back with the delicate ripple of vines over skin, but if he thinks too much about that, he'll break, and he can't yet). Instinct only goes so far, and always to further what the rational mind will not permit, and he feels perfectly in alignment, body, mind, soul and the gaping wound that is where Gojyo _isn't. _

Each evening, crouched over low tables in the few inns that struggle to survive on the road, or over the small fires they dare to build to mitigate the biting wind that sweeps down from the mountains that tower over them, they study the maps Kougaiji's provided, ensuring they're headed in the right direction. Hakkai contributes the bare minimum, letting Sanzo pick their path. Every ambush is just more fodder for him, after all, as long as he manages to survive the first surprise. Goku curls up with Sanzo at nights, after, not even pretending to be happy to sleep alone anymore, and it's a mark of Sanzo's state of mind that he permits it, pressing his back to Goku's, even allowing him to clutch back at his hip in his sleep. Hakkai watches them while they sleep, unblinking, something to fix his eyes on while his other senses seek the dark for the rank auras of attacking youkai, the Wave something he can almost smell on them this close to the heart. He'd planned out little futures for himself, idly spun dreams of vegetable gardens, and if those little fantasies had included the other three around a table, and perhaps Gojyo's body pressed up against his in a solid line of heat against rainy nights as Goku presses himself to Sanzo now, was it really too ambitious for the gods to countenance?

No matter; it's ashes now, what's left of it lying in an unmarked grave, and all he can do is rage against the monstrous injustice that leaves him alive, time and again, and tears his loved ones from him instead. Still, he can't help but think, better him than Gojyo; better to endure this than to imagine him limping on for years, unable to give up and unwilling to let go. The few times he's let himself calculate that, he's been forced to abandon any plans of early death he might have cooked up. Unfortunately, he's far less considerate than Gojyo is, and no amount of knowing that Gojyo would want him to go on can overtake his essential selfishness. He supposes that's why Gojyo never asked him to.


	5. 0

_**0**_

Fuck, it's hot.

Sweat stings Gojyo's eyes, his headband completely soaked already, drops rolling down his neck and plastering his shirt to his skin just that little bit more. His hands are slick on the shaft of the shakujou, his aim getting steadily worse because of it. Even his feet slide around inside his boots, wet and throbbing with the heat and movement, and it's a good thing that he's long since learned to tap even tiny shit like that to feed his will to fight, 'cause the fuckers just keep _coming_.

Every damn day, it gets worse - Houtou throwing goons at them in larger and dumber numbers, apparently hoping that one of these times, Sanzo's going to just give up, hand over the sutra and wander off back home. Of course, that bastard would sooner burn to death than ask for water he couldn't reach, so being here in this heat, exhausted and beating back yet another bunch of hopeless targets is really beginning to _Piss. Him. Off. _

An arm lands on the ground beside him, thwapping wetly against his ankle, and he can't be bothered to spare a second to have a thought about that. Not that he would, anymore; it's just one more stain that Hakkai's going to carefully not bitch about having to get out, later. Not the first, won't be the last. Screaming just behind him as the owner of the arm figures out that he's lost it. Fuck, what a bullshit trip. Gojyo swings around, pulling his elbow back hard, the stationary blade biting flesh to (_shut him up_) put the fucker out of his misery.

And now he'll spend all night scrubbing blood off his boots.

Turn, duck to avoid a badly-aimed club, quick jab and lift and that acrid reek of intestines that he's never forgotten, and he has no idea when that started being a _good_ memory. Maybe it's the road, and the burning in his arms and legs and the endless fucking attack-fight-kill-drive-repeat that have become the entirety of his life. Well, almost, he amends, catching a glimpse of Hakkai out of the corner of his eye, there and then gone again, blocked in a flash of pointed teeth that falls under his blade. Gods, when the fuck is that crazy youkai bitch going to run out of stupid grunts to sacrifice?

Somewhere off to his right, Goku is taking on the largest group, and even he doesn't hoot and holler like he used to; the only sounds from that direction are the low huffs of effort and the sickening crack and thump of bone and flesh falling to inhuman strength amid the screams of the dying. The dead, of course, make no sound at all. Sanzo's gun, tiny pops in the distance like a kid's capgun, except these targets don't get up again. The crack and sizzle he's learned to hear, when Hakkai's qi gathers, and those ones are always too fucking surprised to shriek. Assorted cries of idiot aggression as they rush in, so damn eager to be bludgeoned, shot, blasted, sliced down...it used to make him sick.

Cartilage snaps under his elbow, the metal _schick_ of chain in shaft as his blade returns and then flies away again in an automatic combination of defense and attack, the wind of a sword meant to take his head off only managing to ruffle his hair. Damn it, he's so fucking exhausted, it's _hot,_ and these mooks just never seem to fucking end...

Pain explodes behind Gojyo's left knee, his leg buckling under his uneven weight and taking him to the ground, the clatter of his weapon against embedded rocks loud in his ears. Wasn't the guy with the sword; the fucker shouldn't have been there. Rage wells in his chest - for pain and the heat and fatigue and sneaky little bastards with fucking clubs who don't know how to stay put and get offed by the right guy - and he lifts from the ground with a snarl, right arm swinging out, spray of blood as surprised, dead eyes land a few feet from him. There's still another one, though.

Gojyo spins, his arm high and across his chest and _stupid_ is the only thing he can think, when fire seems to rip through him. He sees the glint of metal under the rust of the blood he's shed, and the weight of death tears the blade from his ribs as his attacker falls. He thinks that Goku screams, and he looks that way, but the monkey's turning back toward the last of his horde, and Gojyo wonders why he's suddenly alone. Hey, assholes, plenty more Sha Gojyo for...

Fuck, it's too damn hot to breathe. Like sucking flames through a straw, burning his lungs.

The ground cracks his cheekbone when he hits it - he can feel the crunch, see the shock of it in his right eye, and Hakkai's going to pretend he's not pissed off about having to heal up something so dumb. He can see Sanzo, now, taking aim and firing in cold succession; the attack is still on, and they need him. He'll get up in just a second, when he's got his wind back.

Hakkai's feet. What the fuck...Hakkai's knees, legs, face, the sky...shit, the priest and the kid are going to get on his case for not getting up in time. He drags his eyes off the bright and the blue, to green. Hakkai's mouth is moving, and it looks like he should understand, but the sounds are all wrong. He coughs, his body lurching, agony slicing through him, and this feels like breathing mud. Rust taste in his mouth, sharp and thick as the air he struggles to pull in.

Hakkai's screaming at him, and he doesn't know what he's done, but it must be pretty fucking bad, to make Hakkai look all white and crazy like that. _I'm sorry_. Only it won't come out, cemented in his chest with all the breath he can't find. Hands press to his chest, and he's screaming, if it would only climb out of his fucking throat, and panic winds through his gut just as firmly as Hakkai's qi. Heat, fuck, more heat, and there's something really fucking wrong with this picture.

Hakkai's panicking, too.

Gojyo can feel his wounds beginning to close, and Hakkai's still got that look on his face, his words finally resolving into Gojyo's name, over and over again. It's going to be okay now, though. Gojyo opens his mouth to say so, but it's not working. Tiny, torturous breath that won't get all the way in, Gojyo's body convulsing with the effort, his vision darkening. Touch, then. Simple thing that always makes Hakkai all right again - except that his arm refuses to move, and Hakkai won't stop, his skin getting whiter, eyes wider as he tangles himself tighter into Gojyo's chest.

_Gods, Hakkai, please...please don't look at me like_


End file.
